


Ghost

by T Verano (t_verano)



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Community: sentinel_thurs, Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2020-03-09 07:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18912283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_verano/pseuds/T%20Verano
Summary: The loft is too empty.





	Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday challenge 447 - ghost

The loft is too empty. Jim isn't sure exactly when he lost the ability to be enough on his own, in his own home, but he sure as hell knows who he lost it to. There doesn't seem to be any getting it back.

He pours himself his second cup of coffee for the morning, already resenting Simon's "Take a goddamned day _off,_ Jim" order; the day that stretches in front of him is as empty as the loft that surrounds him.

It's on days like that this that Jim is grateful for the loft's ghost.

Privately grateful. 

Very privately grateful — he's not going to raise eyebrows or field questions, not about this. Anyway, this ghost belongs to _him._ It's nobody else's business.

The first sign is almost always scent — an eddy of air in the loft suddenly fills with the scent of all-natural herbal shampoo or of a mug of freshly steeped chamomile tea; fills with the round golden smell of sunlight on skin: Sandburg's idiosyncratic smell.

Taste follows. Jim's fresh-poured cup of coffee takes on a familiar layer, the taste of Blair's lips standing out clearly against the ceramic background of the mug, trailing down into Jim's 100% Colombian medium roast — just like so many mornings' worth of stolen sips of coffee, Blair claiming Jim's cup of joe instead of bothering to pour his own.

Then, if he's lucky, Jim begins to feel the phantom nudge of a shoulder, the prod of an eager elbow. If he sits on the couch in just the right place, he can feel the press of Sandburg's thigh against his own, the brush of flannel against his hand. He thinks of all the evenings spent wrestling over the remote — of Blair's wheedling and bribery, his kamikaze tickling attacks — but now that Jim's in uncontested control he doesn't turn the TV on.

He's got better things to watch, to listen to.

To almost listen to. The words are indistinct, blurred in Jim's ears — his head — but the muttering is unmistakable: Sandburg caught up in his blue books, his textbooks, his computer shit. Caught up in case files. Arguing points with his students, his professors, himself, Jim.

It's a comfortable sound, unreal though it is, a companionable one. Relaxing. Jim listens, and sometimes if he looks just right —

— just right, not really _looking,_ the shadows in the loft will give him glimpses of his ghost. A glint of light on copper strands of hair threaded in among a dozen shades of brown, a flash of Pacific-blue irises vanishing in the blink of an eyelid. A swirl of dust motes halfway across the loft where for a moment the shadows seem to be moving as if they were trying to hide the flying gestures of a pair of expressive hands…

On long, slow days like this, until Jim finally hears those familiar footsteps enter the lobby downstairs and take the steps towards the loft two at a time, accompanied by a quiet chant of "Home, home, home," he's grateful for his ghost. So when Sandburg whirlwinds into the loft with a book-laden backpack and a shit-eating grin and a cheerful "You miss me?", Jim just gets up from the couch with a lazy stretch and smiles a little to himself; answers Blair, mostly truthfully, "Nope."

He figures Blair doesn't really need to know _why_.


End file.
